Applying to your context

Now that you’ve read these testimonials, let’s address each of these issues. First, auto marked formative assessments are indeed an effective way for students to monitor their learning and to identify learning needs. There are two things I would do if I were the lecturer. One is I would explicitly identify how each quiz is different to another and is equally important. For example, at the start of each quiz, I would give students a checklist and say, which of these concepts do you feel absolutely sure you understand and you can demonstrate your knowledge of? If you haven’t ticked all of these, take the quiz below and test your knowledge.

Giving students the specifics of each quiz can help them recognise their learning needs and how the quiz can help them meet those needs. Secondly, remember that out-of-class learning shouldn’t be in complete isolation from in-class learning. So if I were the lecturer, I’d refer to the particular questions asked in the quizzes, in lectures, in tutorials, I might display the question, ask students to work on it, and then I tell them the answer is actually in the quiz. Another example is I could maybe work with students in class on questions that a lot of them answered incorrectly in a quiz. In short, I would connect the out-of-class learning experience to in-class learning.

Let’s look at the issue lecturer two raises, which is students not responding to discussion forums out-of-class. Now, out-of-class discussions are useful for creating a sense of belongingness, especially in online learning environments. Remember that students need to recognise the value and the significance of learning out-of-class for them to engage with it. When we post a video or a new story on a discussion forum, we need to provide a purpose, a rationale for why students need to engage with it. “Read and share your ideas,” or “Here’s a cool video,” are not really interesting, engaging tasks. The task you set needs to arouse interest and a genuine desire for students to engage with the resource. So I might say to students, “Watch this video about this topic.” “Now the expert claims this, however, I argue,” and I might ask them to write, “Whose side are you on? What is your view?”

At the start of this course, we said that autonomous learning beyond the classroom occurs away from the gaze of the educator. That is the concern that lecturer three has. We cannot know with certainty the full range of out-of-class learning experiences students engage with and to what extent these create effective learning opportunities. But that’s okay. As educators, we cannot and should not control what our students do. Our goal is to develop our students’ capacities to exercise autonomy in their learning beyond the classroom. We do this by supporting them in identifying their learning needs and goals, in making decisions on what actions to take, and in how to monitor their learning.